This is what’s frightening about the instability in the Democratic nomination race: you could end up with a numbskull like Scott Walker as President. Either channeling 2008 McCain or perhaps just finding new forms of doofus militarism, Walker is calling on President Obama to cancel the state visit of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s because the borderline collapse of their economy is pulling down our stock market.
Is Donald Trump a ‘populist’, the candidate of resentment and privilege or simply the final embodiment of the Crazy, the Crazy made flesh and coming amongst us, the Jesus who was foretold by Michele Bachmann’s John the Baptist. One of the great injuries Trump has already done to America and our collective dignity is that we are now forced to take him seriously in terms of understanding what he represents in political terms since he’s not going anywhere and only appears to be gaining strength.
Much of what has driven the GOP in the Obama era has been anxiety and resentment about losing out to rising forces in the American political-economy and culture – the decreasing white share of the national electorate (embodied by but also partly connected to Barack Obama’s election), changing social and cultural mores (support for LGBT rights) driven by Americans under the age of 35, a renascent and assertive women’s movement and the increasing defensiveness or even paranoia of organized wealth.
Trump bags first mega campaign contribution from disgraced ex-con real estate mogul behind one of the New Jersey/New York’s most notorious recent scandals.
Donald Trump’s effort to rebrand the GOP as a white nationalist party seems to be going splendidly.
This amusing BBC write-up of how enchanted the French are by the American male archetype may be unintentionally revealing of Brits’ own American man-crush:
VP Biden holds meeting with Elizabeth Warren as he mulls entering presidential race.
Tomorrow will mark nine years since my father died, suddenly and unexpectedly at 68. I took two weeks off from TPM and when I came back I wrote this piece about his death and who he was.
Is it getting this bad? Flailing in the polls and struggling to find a rationale for his candidacy, is Jeb Bush suggesting he may be black? Judd Legum at ThinkProgress points out that the Jeb SuperPac ‘Right to Rise’ has just blanketed Iowa with a mailer in which Jeb’s head appears to be photoshopped on to a black man’s body.
You can see the tweet here.
It took Trump two days to condemn a hate crime his Mexican-bashing apparently inspired. Two days. Right out of the box his response was yeah, that’s a bummer but my supporters are “passionate” about making America great again. Two days. He’s not responsible for what these thugs did. His response, however, was and is deeply revealing.